


A Sort of Revolution

by crimsonkitty



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, First Meetings, First Time, Love at First Sight, M/M, RPF, and what happens next, or at least i assume so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 00:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11566413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonkitty/pseuds/crimsonkitty
Summary: Chris is sinking.





	A Sort of Revolution

**Author's Note:**

> So. Here it is. 
> 
> You guys I have literally been working on this fic since November of 2012. I don't know if anyone still cares about this pairing anymore but here you all go. It's as perfect as it's going to be and it just... really needs to be done now. 
> 
> This originally started out as a fic about Carp and Waino being the same age. It... didn't really end up like that but I still feel it's important to mention. This was also an experiment in style from way back when I started writing it. I don't know what you'd call it now except my own blood sweat and tears. 
> 
> God. Shout out to literally everyone I've ever spoken to about this fic which is a lot of you. So so many of you. The biggest shout out to [thesaddestboner](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thesaddestboner) for betaing and just in general hand holding for the past five years. Title comes from 'Sort of Revolution' by Fink.

Chris is sinking.

The grass is like quicksand, pulling him down slowly every time he moves, a familiar blanket of green at his back.

His hands are a solid weight on his stomach, anchoring him so he doesn’t go under completely and get killed by a flyball because he missed someone screaming. 

The others leave him alone mostly, though Halladay will kick a little at his cleats when he passes by, in acknowledgement or affection or just to be annoying.

Sometimes Chris will tell him to fuck off. Most of the time, he’ll stick a leg out to put Halladay flat on his face, Roy laughing and cursing with dirt in his mouth. 

But for now, he squirms deeper into the softness of the day, sinking towards sleep. Lets the warmth soak over him.

He props a knee up and that’s when something pops loud and tight in his back, distracting him from the red sunlight disappearing from his eyelids. He groans, thinking he’ll be an old man before he ever gets to be a young one. The word ‘delicate’ has been thrown around behind closed doors and Chris might break someone’s nose the next time he hears it. Might break a wall too and prove everyone right.

The clouds shift and clear their throat, a small, purposeful thing that pulls him back from the quiet. He opens his eyes, looks up at the figure breaking his silence with their knees just out of reach. Someone in Braves colors with long, skinny legs shaped like straws. The stranger’s hat is blotting out the sun, casting Chris into shadow against the field.

“You’re tall,” says Chris. 

It shocks the man - kid? He looks the same age as Chris, only wearing it younger - into a surprised laugh. “So’er you.”

Chris squints the spots out of his vision and sits up. There are grass clippings along his shoulders and he brushes them off absentmindedly, getting to his feet. The stranger’s shadow stays where it is.

The long legs are longer than his, now that they’re both standing. Chris doesn’t know many people taller than him and he suspects the other guy is still looking for one. It makes his head swim.

He waits but the new guy doesn’t say anything else, just stands there staring like Chris is the one who came up to him. 

“Can I help you with somethin’, buddy?” 

All he gets is an amused smile under an Atlanta brim and Chris blinks, thinking maybe he slept through the answer. That it got lost somewhere in the air between them.

“I’m Adam.” Atlanta sticks out a right hand and Chris can see the calluses on his fingers. He takes the hand and feels them matching up with his own.

“Chris.”

He pulls back and lets his hands curl up into the sleeves of his shirt, ragged fingernail getting caught on a stray thread. It’s early morning under Florida sun and sweat drips down the back of his neck. He’ll have to change before the game. Turn the water cold and put his head under. 

“You don’t look like a Chris,” Adam tells him, with crossed arms and absolute surety. 

Chris huffs. “You don’t look like an Adam.” 

It’s a lie. The guy is more wholesome looking than homemade apple fucking pie. The superhero levels of blue blink back at him. 

But. 

He’s never felt like anything other than a Chris. Never had much attachment to it, either, sure. But it’s a name on a piece of paper. Something listed in numerical order and said over loudspeakers. 

“What do I look like then?” he asks, humoring the guy. 

He studies Chris, head and eyebrows tilted at the same angle. “I’m not sure yet.” 

Chris gives him his most incredulous stare. “All that and you’re not even sure?”

The guy shrugs because it doesn’t matter.

“Can I stretch with ya?”

His accent twangs. Falls in looping, twisting vowel shapes that tell Chris they’re a lot closer to Adam’s childhood home than his own. 

“Sure?”

It’s more of a question than the one Adam’s just asked but Adam points the smile more fully in his direction and sits on the ground, stretching out over his knees.

“Thanks.”

They don’t say much, just shifting sounds of clothing and joints popping. One of Adam’s teammates comes over to ask him something and Chris spies the name ‘Wainwright’ on the back of Adam’s jersey. It sounds like a comic book character. He almost laughs. 

“You throwing today?” he asks when the teammate is gone. Chris doesn’t know if he’s bullpen or starter or both. Looks more like a future nascar dad than a baseball player with the big eyes and brown hair. 

Adam plucks at the green at his feet and keeps his eyes in front of him. “How’d you guess?” His voice is soft, kept hidden between the two of them.

Chris looks him up and down. “You’re taller than me. Don’t know who you think you’re fooling.”

Adam throws his head back and laughs with his teeth. “S’pose you’re right. Not much mystery to me.”

“Except what you’re doing over here on my side of the field,” Chris points out. 

A smirk. “Stretchin’.” 

Chris gives up with a shrug and falls backwards into the grass, fingers buried in the dirt until there’s brown under his nails that will stay there until his shower after the game. He finds he doesn't mind so much. 

He rolls onto his side and there’s a bruise on his knee that he can feel, every time he moves. A shattered bat head catching him wrong and the trainers called him ‘lucky.’ Even dozing, he sneers at the word. When he opens his eyes, Adam’s legs are contorted into an S-shape, winding round and seemingly never ending. 

“You fall asleep again?” 

Chris stares up at him, caught up in the sudden breeze and not wanting to move. Adam pretends like he’s worried about pulling a muscle in his calf. Glances out the corner of his eye. 

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

He has Adam’s full attention now. Chris waves a casual hand in the air, letting his head drop into the crook of his elbow.

“I’ll let you know.” 

Adam pulls a face, looking discontent with the answer and Chris wonders how often people say no to him. 

“You nap out here a lot, then?” Adam asks, an eyebrow raised high and looking genuinely curious. Looking for a lead in. 

Chris smirks. “Maybe.”

Adam groans dramatically, whole body sagging in defeat. He doesn’t say anything else. Instead, he turns away, seemingly lost in thought. Chris lets him, thinking how easy it would be to stay here until game time, shutting out the sounds of the stadium. If he just closes his eyes again...

“So, how’s Canada?”

Chris can't help the bark of laughter, pushed out of him like a breath. “Fuck you.”

Adam smiles at him without looking and Chris never does get his eyes closed. Teeth again. Seems incapable of smiling any other way. 

Chris keeps his own hidden. It’s harder than he thought. 

“I’m a Georgia boy,” Adam says and it’s less casual than it sounds. 

“Lucky you.” It explains a lot.

“Hm.”

“Gettin’ to play at home.”

Adam hums in thought. “S’alright. See my mama once a week like a good southern boy.” He’s leaning hard on the accent and there’s a joke here that Chris is missing, like Adam’s having conversations with invisible people.

“Not a fan of your mom’s cooking then?”

Adam just scoffs. “Shut up. Where you from?” 

“New Hampshire.” 

Adam scoffs again.

Chris looks at him. And looks.

Adam breaks first. “Yeah, okay, it’s awful. Just don’t tell her I said tha-”

Someone is yelling like a person just got killed, breaking the serene quiet that had settled itself over the field. Chris looks around wildly, scraping his ear against the dirt. 

Adam lets out a bark of laughter. “Over there.” 

He grabs a handful of jersey, knuckles pressed against Chris’ side, and pulls til they’re both sitting and looking towards centerfield. Chris stares past Adam’s chin in time to see some of the Jays bullpen collapse in laughter as one of the new kids, just barely eighteen and a skinny weed out of high school, stands there, confused and hair dripping around his face. 

“What the hell?” Chris asks.

“Water balloon, I think.” Adam unsuccessfully holds back a giggle. 

Chris rolls his eyes. “He’s gonna be bigger than them in a couple months.”

“A sleeper cell out for revenge.”

“We’ll set him on the National League next.” 

Adam grins and yanks on his shirt a little. “He’ll get a new rule in the handbook named after him.” 

It’s Chris who laughs with his teeth this time. 

An ear-splitting whistle echoes through the air and someone is yelling, “WAINO!” from the sidelines. Adam whips his head around and waves a hand, yells, “COMING!” right back. 

It takes Chris a moment to realize that it’s the same conversation. “Waino?” 

Adam shrugs. “It is what it is.”

He lets go of Chris’ jersey. Leaves it half-bunched and pulled out on one side.

“It’s cute.” 

“Shut up.”

“Wainwright!” The voice is less patient sounding. 

Chris raises his eyebrows. “The full thing this time.” 

“Yeah. Heh.” Adam rubs the back of his neck, sheepish. “I gotta go.” 

“Okay.” Chris nods. 

“Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks for lettin’ me stretch with you.” 

He gets up without another word, long legs unfolding in front of him, and gives a small wave over his shoulder like he’s in some school pageant. 

Chris doesn’t watch him disappear. 

The game that day is like any other in the grapefruit league. Slow and sweaty and draining. 

The Braves win behind some reliever they’re trying to convert because spring training is the time for false hopes and sometimes slightly truer ones. Chris doesn’t pitch for another two days and doesn’t much care to live in the present with the heat, his mind instead somewhere across the state with his next start, a future of cramped bus rides and someone singing softly in the seat behind him.

Adam goes out, bottom fourth, long arms swinging and stretching across his chest. So skinny, he looks like the wind could knock him down. 

His movements are familiar though, slow and loping with tucked in legs and a curve that drops down until your knees buckle. Chris guesses that when you’re tall, you’re tall and you can’t do much about it, no matter who you are, except half hope someone comes at you in a fight. 

Adam pitches two innings and sends Chris a huge Georgia peach smile when he sees him watching.

It’s March and no one really cares about the outcome, more concerned with past injuries and a hanging breaking ball that won’t meet its spot. They shrug off the loss while someone pats Chris good-naturedly on the back for a game he wasn’t a part of.

He showers, changes, washes the dirt off his hands. Knuckles and palms and fingernails until they’re pink. His clothes fit strange, feel different against his skin in the southern air, and he wonders if that’ll ever stop.

Adam is waiting for him outside in the parking lot, perched against a bright blue car that Chris knows doesn’t belong to him. He’s eating a paper wrapped ballpark hotdog with both hands and there’s mustard at the corner of his mouth that he wipes away with a knuckle when he sees Chris. 

“Hey.” He nods at Chris through his mouthful of food.

Chris nods back, slowly, head still stuck on uniforms and heat and two days from now. The world shifts uneasily over his shoulders, settling into the fixed point of Adam. “Shouldn’t you be leaving?” 

Adam holds out a second paper container in answer. “Hot dog? You guys got better food than us.” 

Chris shakes his head and sits down next to him, jeans blue on paint. His stomach is growling, but the Florida air never fails to make him a little dizzy and head over ass. He hates it here, if he’s honest. Hates the way his fingers stick to whatever he touches. 

Adam shrugs, downing both in a matter of seconds, then clearing his throat. Chris looks away. 

“The real question is,” Adam declares, picking at a loose thread in his jeans, “Whose car are we sitting on?”

“Dunno,” Chris shrugs. “They won’t mind, though.” 

“You sure?” 

Chris laughs. Feels his elbow thump against the hood. Doesn’t answer. 

Adam crumples the leftover hot dog wrappers into his hands and fires them into a nearby trash can, small hop in his step as he watches them hit the opening. “Show me around before I have to leave.”

“Why?” The car has been sitting in the sun all day, and the paint is burning his hands a little. Feels like the railings around the dugout, turning his arms pink during afternoon games. 

“Cause I want to,” Adam says, cracking his knuckles, jacket brushing the sleeve of Chris’ t-shirt in tandem with each pop. He stands, looking out past the parking lot until Chris stands with him. 

“Yeah, okay.” He’s been saying that a lot. 

They walk aimlessly through the stadium, floating through stray sunbeams and up into the walkways behind home plate, where Chris likes to jog in the morning because of the shade.

“It’s nice up here,” Adam says and leans a shoulder against the wall.

Chris shrugs, small talk beyond him this late in the day.

“What’s got you so gloomy?” Adam asks, arms crossed and bent forwards. A small breeze ruffles at the collar of his shirt.

Chris doesn’t have a good enough answer to give him. “Nothing.” 

Adam waits, and Chris doesn’t know when Adam had the time to start expecting different answers. He looks different out of uniform. Older.

Chris sighs. “We come down to Atlanta in June, you know.” It comes out sharp and labored and Chris bites at his lip. Blames the heat and the sun in his eyes.

“I know.” Adam shrugs. “I prob’ly won’t be there, though.”

“Oh.” He says it wrong. Doesn’t know how he was supposed to say it or even if there was a right way. 

Adam punches him in the chest. Keeps his knuckles there a few seconds. “Don’t look at me like that, hot shot,” he says, summer warm and familiar. “I’ll be fine. Might not even be with the team period come next spring.” 

“How come?” Not that Chris hasn’t been thinking the same thing about himself time and time again, words like ‘delicate’ and ‘investment’ hidden behind office doors like skeletons. His shoulder twitches.

“Don’t think they like me very much.” Adam half shrugs, biting at his thumb. Chris almost reaches out to pull it away. “People talkin’. You know.”

“Do you wake them up when they’re trying to sleep too?” He tries to toss it off with a smile, but Adam pauses, shifts in dizzy spells of focus til Chris is seeing three sets of eyes not looking at him.

“N’aw. Just you.”

Chris feels his lungs contract. The ends of his fingers are tingling and he stuffs his hands into his pockets, rough denim pulling at the hair on his knuckles. He breathes. 

“Why’d you come over this morning?” he asks quietly.

Adam doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move. Just bites his lip until it turns white. 

“Cause I wanted to meet the guy who could fall asleep in the middle of a fuckin’ baseball field.” He doesn’t smile. Chris can still see teeth. 

“Specific of you.” The joke falls flatter than roadkill. Chris imagines his insides becoming his outside, spilled out onto a gravel shoulder. 

Adam stands there, head bent, strands of hair barely long enough to touch his ears. “Yeah. Guess so.”

“Should catch your bus.” It croaks deep in his throat. Mouse words and he’s saying them wrong again. Doesn’t know what he’s saying. 

“Not for another hour.” Adam shrugs, eyeline somewhere along Chris’s shoe tops. He cracks a knuckle and doesn’t look up.

Words run in loops through Chris’ head, half finished thoughts and repeated echoes that buzz behind his eyes, turning the corners of his world dark and blinking.

“I met you this morning.” A plea dropping hollow into his chest, and it tears through him, bites his roadkill insides bloody.

“Yeah. You did.”

Adam’s teeth are going to bite right through his lip. The indent will be there for hours. Chris thinks it looks painful. 

Adam sighs. 

“Look-”

Chris kisses him first and it hurts.

They slam back against the wall, concrete scratching against his hand, palms clutching for a world spinning too fast.

His stomach hips mouth are twisting with Adam’s, cotton nerves compressing and trapped. He puts his tongue against the indent of Adam’s teeth just to feel it, feel the sting of it, both their lips rough and chapped and dry, catching at each other in little sparks of movement.

An arm curls completely around his neck until the crease of Adam’s elbow rests against Chris' heartbeat, pounding to the taste of skin.

The arm and the tips of Adam’s shoulder blades pushed roughly against the wall are the only things keeping him upright as Chris pushes forward and into his space, trying to taste, trying to feel, Adam’s spine bending into bridges of bone and dereliction.

Their knees are tangled, knots soaked and saturated and permanent, one wrong move sending them both crashing to the floor 

He searches for seams and finds hipbones, jagged things that don’t match his palm. Scrapes his skin against them too. Covers them shiny and slick. 

“Shit,” Adam says, trying to push himself closer but can’t. Bites at Chris’ lips and puts a hand against his ribs instead. 

They tip and balance, two sides of a free swinging scale and Chris still can’t breathe, left his air on the field this morning and can’t get it back.

Adam is whispering between moments, between his lips and into his mouth. Says, “Wanna do this all night,” like it’s an easy thing. Like his hand on Chris’ shoulder won’t kill them both.

Chris feels his answer spill out in broken noises, unwilling and pulled like taffy. “Why don’t you?” 

“Cause I’d never leave.”

“Wha-”

Adam doesn’t give him time to ask. Kisses him again and puts a hand under Chris’ shirt to touch the skin of his stomach. Leaves it there until Chris is shaking, standing there trembling with his face buried in Adam’s neck until Adam pulls his hand away completely, a last swipe of his thumb across Chris’ hip.

He uncurls himself from Chris, spine fully against the wall. Takes his elbows, his smile back, and steps under Chris’ outstretched arm in one fluid movement. 

Chris watches him disappear around a curve of walkway. Watches him not look back.

His forehead meets the cement wall in hiccups of uneven breath, rough against his hairline. Red stars in his eyelids and palm prints on the wall. Chris slides to the ground and puts his head between his knees. 

He imagines the grass under his fingers this morning and every morning before. Clouds clearing their throat until he opens his eyes. 

Chris sinks and he sleeps and there might be a smile on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on tumblr at [kaqueershi](http://kaqueershi.tumblr.com/)


End file.
